"Frequency of a Lion-Heart " A Short Poetic Essay

AI Generated

(This poem references and quotes lyrics from "I Just Can't Get You Off of My Mind" by Lenny Kravitz (1995). All lyric content remains the sole property of Lenny Kravitz and his respective rights holders. This work is entirely non-commercial; it is not monetized, licensed, or sold in any form. It exists only as a personal creative tribute to the song and the artist.)

This is a narrative poem inspired by a parking lot outside of a drugstore, an old white Chevy pick up truck and an older man inside of it surrendered to a song. The song and the man taught me, without knowing, what it looks like to be unafraid of love.

Frequency of a Lion-Heart 

The song found me before its revelation did...

"Life is just a lonely highway, I'm out here on the open road." 

spilling out of an old white Chevy truck that idled like a prayer, like something that had been waiting to be released into the open air.

I wasn't ready.

Some revelations find you only in the times that matter... and sometimes through someone else's window.

"I'm old enough to see behind me, but young enough to feel my soul." 

He was reclined behind the wheel, a seasoned soul with eyes full of distance.

Not lost ... but gone.

His stillness was a language.

The music cocooned him like a second skin, shutting his eyes to the world as it unveiled only what its cadence knew how to find.

His stillness whispered that he'd lived something in the song that he could still find

"I don't want to lose you baby. And I don't want to be alone."

I stood there in the ordinary light of a Walgreens parking lot

watching a stranger disappear into music

the way water disappears into earth, completely, without apology 

I realized I wanted to be there, where he was

In that place where memories of regret are more insidious than fears of love.

"Don't want to live my days without you. But for now I've got to be without you." 

Something shifted in me then.

The song grew roots between us, crossed the distance of race, gender, and age ,

and quietly nested in a space that didn't ask permission

to be, only to remember ...

"I got a pocket full of money, I got a pocket full of keys that have no bound." 

that the only strangers are memories made from fantasy, not from being real.

A stranger's memory turned into something I could almost touch through song...

Briefly holding together, two people, unknown to each other, linked by the same invisible thread.

"But when it comes down to loving, I just can't get you off of my mind."